Friday, January 23, 2009

Great result for FF

The weather people tell us that today could be a lot like yesterday, although perhaps just a little cooler. The temperatures on the weather board this morning indicated more similar ones as yesterday.

It was funny watching the evening news last night as the two anchors and the weather guy actually acted rather giddily over yesterday’s temperatures crossing above the freezing mark for the first time in quite a while.

There’s a chance it could reach that magic 32 degrees again today; but if it does, it probably won’t get much higher. A cold front will bring a return to the colder temperatures over the weekend, though.

Here’s a little update on my Fearless Friend (FF) who had cataract surgery on one of his eyes yesterday. The procedure seems to have gone far better than even he had anticipated.

FF sent me an e-mail yesterday telling me the patch was already off his eye and had been replaced with a protective glass shield. But he could see out of it and was told he could use his eye as much as was comfortable for him. In his own words…

The new eye continues to improve by the minute. And I am not rushing things and know that it will need time to settle down. Presently I am taking 3 different eye drops. One is an antibiotic, one promotes healing and I am not sure of the other one, but I suspect that it may be a lubricant. Remember that scratchy feeling that I had? Well, that is already gone. I still can’t believe the sharpness of the colors. A good example might be looking at the walls of an old room that had cigarette smoke on the walls and looking at them again after the walls were painted. That is the difference that I see between the new lens and the other eye. The eye is still a little dilated, and vision continues to improve as the pupil closes. When I took a look at the eyes in a mirror there is no difference between the clarity of the whites of the eye. Just a slight trace of red in each. I cannot find any place where there was an incision. None!

“Don’t worry, I am not pushing anything. My enthusiasm is only that I am so far ahead of where I thought I would be in only a few hours. I hope that I get to see the eye chart tomorrow and see where I am with respect to that magic 20/20. And in saying that I will not be disappointed in the least if it is not 20/20. I already know that I could function with the bare eye if necessary. That is something that I have not been able to do for 60 years.

FF also said he only has to wear that glass shield through last night, and then only nights for a week so he won’t accidently rub or scratch his new lens during the night. He has his other eye done in two weeks.

I am very happy for my friend and selfishly hope my own experience of a defibrillator implant next Friday goes as well.

Shifting gears a bit, I suspect you’ve read of another screw up in Augusta. As a result of double posting, the state is another 11 million dollars in the hole. The officials are blaming everything for the mess except themselves. Naturally it was a “computer glitch.” I’ve been working with computers since the very early 1980s. I’ve taught computer applications. And I’ve managed two different computer networks…one I designed with public domain software and later a Novell network.

Computers only do what people tell them to do. Nothing else. I seriously doubt the latest Maine government mess was a “computer glitch” but rather it was a human who pressed a wrong key or entered wrong information. Even if it were a program fault, that would be because a human messed up the program. Want to bet no one loses his or her job or even gets a serious reprimand for this screw up?

I have read accounts on line and I’ve seen accounts on NBC news of Caroline Kennedy’s decision to drop out of consideration to replace Hilary Clinton as a Senator from New York. In each case, the headline or lead sentence gave the reason as a potential tax problem or problem with a housekeeper. In the stories I’ve read or seen, there has been not one single word explaining these two charges. The reports just go on to say she withdrew for “personal reasons.”

Even if later reports which I did not see amplified the information, I’d call saying what was said in the earlier reports totally misleading and extremely poor reporting. And the news media wonders why news organizations are losing credibility.

Just to be clear, my comments here concerned the news media and not Caroline Kennedy.

Now it’s time to start thinking of the weekend.

GiM

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